Staff profile

About me

I’m a historian of late antiquity and the early middle ages. My expertise lies in the later Roman Empire and its western successor states, covering the period from the fourth to the early eighth centuries.

My research is situated at the intersections of legal, social, and political history. I’m particularly interested in punishment and what its use tells us about the nature of society. I’ve explored these issues in an article in the Journal of Late Antiquity, which examines the treatment of defeated usurpers and rebels in the later Roman Empire. My current research focuses on the penalty of exile. Several publications have already arisen from this work, including a forthcoming study (co-authored with Prof. Julia Hillner) that investigates female banishment from the earliest days of the Roman Empire to the end of late antiquity, and a chapter that employs digital mapping techniques to analyse clerical exile in the Vandal kingdom of North Africa. I’ve also been keen to showcase my work in more public-facing formats, such as the Historical Association’s History Journal. I’m currently working on a monograph, provisionally entitled Exile in the First Barbarian Kingdoms, which will explore how and why the sanction was employed in the nascent polities of the post-Roman west.

With a background in ancient and medieval history, I completed my PhD at the University of Sheffield in 2019. During my doctoral studies, I was attached to the AHRC-funded international project, ‘The Migration of Faith: Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity, c.325-c.600’. My research contributed to a freely accessible online database of clerical exiles, hosted by Sheffield’s Digital Humanities Institute.

After my doctorate, I held a temporary lectureship at Durham University in between two research fellowships at the University of Tübingen, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. I returned to Durham in 2022 to take up my current post.

• Europe & the Mediterranean c. 300-750 CE
• The barbarian kingdoms
• Late antique/early medieval legal history
• Religious conflict
• The pre-modern ‘state’

Book review

• Mawdsley, H. (2021). Transformations of Romanness: Early Medieval Regions and Identities. Edited by WalterPohl, ClemensGantner, CinziaGrifoni and MariannePollheimer‐Mohaupt. Millennium Studies 71. Berlin: De Gruyter. 2018. xiv + 586 pp. £118. ISBN 978 3 11 058959 7. Early Medieval Europe, 29(2), 277-279. https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.12465

Chapter in book

• Hillner, J., & Mawdsley, H. The Exiling of Women from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages: Data, Patterns, and Research Avenues. In M. Becher, M. Schermaier, K. Vössing, & J. Winnebeck (Eds.), Norms of Dependency in Late Antique and Early Medieval Societies. De Gruyter
• Mawdsley, H. (2018). Hermenegild. In D. G. Hunter, P. J. van Geest, & B. J. Lietaert Peerbolte (Eds.), Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. Brill Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/2589-7993_eeco_sim_00001541
• Mawdsley, H. (2016). Mapping Clerical Exile in the Vandal Kingdom (435–484). In J. Hillner, J. Ulrich, & J. Engberg (Eds.), Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity. Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-653-06051-5

Journal Article

• Mawdsley, H. (2024). Defeat on Display: The Public Abuse of Usurpers and Rebels in Late Antiquity. Journal of Late Antiquity, 17(1), 35-69